A state road official told the Joliet City Council on Monday the state is struggling to maintain downtown drawbridges in the city that “should have been replaced.”

He also delivered the bad news that reopening of the Cass Street bridge will be pushed back to at least late summer 2027.

The timetable for reopening the Brandon Road bridge in Joliet Township also is likely to be pushed back.

Eric Ray, area construction supervisor for the Illinois Department of Transportation, was at a council workshop meeting to give a presentation on the state’s $1.3 billion Interstate 80 project, much of which involves big improvements through Joliet and is proceeding on schedule.

But the question period following his presentation quickly turned to the aging downtown drawbridges.

The bridges were built in the 1930s and shutdowns have become more frequent and prolonged in recent years with state officials pointing to an ongoing challenge of trying to build new parts and retrofitting the mechanical functions of the bridges.

“I’m assuming there’s a day when they outlive their existence,” council member Larry Hug said.

“I would say that day has come and gone,” Ray replied.

He said IDOT is focused on major rehabilitation projects to keep the bridges in working order.

“We’e already past the point where they should have been replaced,” Ray said. “This [rehab] work should have been done 15 years ago.”

Replacing the bridges, however, poses other problems because of the costs, he said.

The Cass Street bridge was closed in fall 2025 with the expectation that it would not reopen until late 2026.

“It looks like it’s going to go into next year,” Ray said, adding, “maybe late summer or early fall of next year we’ll be able to get the Cass Street bridge open again.”

Even before it was shut down, the Cass Street bridge was reduced to one lane in August 2024.

“It’s difficult to tell our residents that we’re going to sit another year without a bridge, maybe longer,” Mayor Terry D’Arcy said.

D’Arcy pointed to heavy trucks going over the bridges as a likely cause of repeated repairs.

But Ray said it’s not the trucks that cause the problems.

Obsolescence, exposure to the elements, and the challenge of retrofitting parts are bigger challenges, he said.

Ray called the Brandon Road bridge “the poster child of what can go wrong with a bridge.”

The bridge was shut down frequently for repairs for years, and it has now been closed since 2023.

IDOT had expected to reopen the Brandon Road bridge this summer, but Ray said that opening may get pushed back to October.

The Brandon Road bridge is the one drawbridge located outside of downtown Joliet. The five other drawbridges cross the Des Plaines River downtown.

The river through Joliet serves as a channel for barge traffic, which requires movable bridges so the barges can pass.

Estimating reopening dates for both the Cass Street and Brandon Road bridges are being pushed back, Ray said.